Hope for Peace in Colombia?

The past few months have seen a number of important victories for the Colombian government over the damnably long-lived Marxist, narcotrafficking FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). The killing of 2nd-in-command Raul Reyes and the seizing of invaluable intelligence from his laptop computer, surrenders by various other leaders, and the news of the death of FARC founder Pedro Antonio Marín, also known as Manuel Marulanda, or Tirofijo (Sureshot), have come hot on the heels of massive protests by Colombian citizens in their home country and abroad against the murderous guerilla army.

President Uribe’s Success against the FARC

In a May 29th article, the Economist writes sensibly  that the FARC’s total defeat may be only a matter of time due to the determined long-term campaign of the Colombian government, led by President Alvaro Uribe since 2002:

Recent changes of government strategy are now bearing fruit. These involve encouraging guerrilla desertions and targeting the leadership. The FARC are now losing more deserters than they are gaining new recruits, according to General Freddy Padilla de León, the armed-forces’ commander. “They are reduced militarily, isolated politically, have a reduced social base and we are cutting their finance [by acting against their drug business]. It’s impossible for them to return to the cities,” he says.

Sophisters, Calculators, and the Economist

In the same article, however, the Economist writes mindlessly about how “the FARC survived the end of the cold war, but at the cost of its ideological purity, by turning to drug-trafficking and kidnapping.” These crimes are apparently less innocent than the usual actions taken by Marxists who gain any measure of power, whether in the Soviet Union, Cambodia, or Cuba: the creation of labor and concentration camp systems, the torture and imprisonment in inhuman conditions of political enemies and complete innocents, and mass executions. The article also leaves out particularly atrocious practices like the targeting of civilians or the use of children as soldiers, described in a Human Rights Watch report here.

FARC’s International Ties: Cuba, Ecuador, and Mexico

It would be a mistake to leave out the century’s worth of international cooperation among communists to place allies and useful idiots in political power through revolution or other means.  The FARC and other groups have benefited from these international networks for decades. Some of the better known examples of this kind of subversion are the Communist Internationals, the World Festivals of Youth and Students, and the Tricontinental or OSPAAAL.

One recent instance of a Cuban intelligence official funneling Mexican students sympathetic to the radical Latin American left to a FARC camp in Ecuador, currently led by Castro and Chavez ally Rafael Correa, is reported here by United Press International.

It is also worth noting the rise of powerful narcotraffickers on the Mexican scene, whose targeted bombings combine with recent attacks by a group called the People’s Revolutionary Army against Mexico’s state-run Pemex oil monopoly to create a climate eerily reminiscent of the bad old days in Colombia. Ioan Grillo of Time Magazine reports and suggests the connection here.

FARC and Venezeula’s Hugo Chavez

Jens Glüsing, writing for Der Spiegel International, has a report hinting at the kind of support of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez for the Colombian terrorists:

Chavez admired FARC founder Marulanda and was “downright obsessed” with his strategic skills, says a Colombian intelligence agent. The Venezuelan leader allegedly offered his idol a financial injection of $300 million (€194 million) — the amount Marulanda had estimated it would cost his group to seize control of the government in Bogota.

The Economist writes more extensively on the insight into the FARC’s inner workings gleaned from the e-mails and information seized on the raid that killed Raul Reyes here:

The e-mails show the extent to which the army has the FARC on the run: the secretariat members often complain of their difficulties in communicating with each other. Days after Mr Reyes was killed another member of the secretariat, Iván Ríos, was murdered by his own bodyguard. This week Mr Ríos’s deputy, Nelly Ávila Moreno (aka “Karina”), surrendered. But the FARC is far from defeated. In an e-mail last August Mr Briceño notes that guerrilla landmines are undermining army morale. Their impact is “very good and we are going to increase them,” he writes.

Nicargua’s Ortega an Unabashed Admirer of Tirofijo

In other news, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, who spouts class warfare rhetoric and praises the half-century of totalitarianism in Cuba and terrorism in Colombia along with Cuba’s Fidel and Raul Castro, Venezuela’s hugo Chavez, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, could not resist publicly eulogizing the FARC’s founder and longtime leader. The Associated Press via the International Herald Tribune reports on the once-and-future Sandinista leader, who paid tribute to Tirofijo at the 2008 Foro de Sao Paolo in Montevideo, Uruguay. For a quick reminder of Sandinista atrocities committed under Ortega, check this article from Front Page magazine and its references.